The parents of Natalee Holloway looked on somberly as a judge on Thursday declared their child dead, more than six years after the American teenager vanished during a high-school graduation trip to the Caribbean island of Aruba.

Joran van der Sloot appears ready to accept responsibility for the killing of a Peruvian woman five years to the day after the disappearance in Aruba of U.S. teen Natalee Holloway, for which he remains the prime suspect.